Bucs’ Todd Bowles has silenced his critics: ‘You’re seeing the results’

Greg Auman

NFC South Reporter

TAMPA, Fla. — It is 3:29 a.m., and Todd Bowles is late.

Raymond James Stadium sits empty across the street, unlit except for a spotlight on the “GO BUCS” sign in the north end zone and blinking red lights up high to warn planes landing nearby.

Entire minutes pass without another car driving by, but the security gate at the Bucs’ facility is manned 24/7, in part because the team’s coaches are nocturnal creatures of habit.

Some 15 hours earlier, Bowles had lamented that serving as defensive playcaller while still being head coach has meant longer days, starting early by any standards.

“It gets me in a lot earlier, I can tell you that much,” Bowles said. “I used to be a 5:30 guy and I migrated to a 4:30 guy, and now I’m like a 3:20 guy. You get a lot of work done in the mornings. I still love that part of it. I still enjoy it very much. It’s getting tiring. I’m getting old. I don’t have that many years left in this league. I still enjoy it.”

Asked how many years he might have left on the job, the 60-year-old Bowles laughed.

“I’m not going to make it to 70,” he said. “I can tell you that right now. I guarantee you I’m not making 70.”

Bowles is the rare man who is early even when he’s late, and at 3:29 a.m. Thursday, his white SUV pulls off Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, through the gate and left into the players’ lot. He backs into his spot and reports to work, trying to make the most of a short week before the Bucs’ divisional round playoff game at Detroit on Sunday.

Twenty-four NFL teams have seen their seasons end, allowing coaches and players to snooze, with dreams of postseason magic all they have left. But the Bucs are somehow one of eight teams still alive, thanks to a commanding 32-9 wild-card win over the defending NFC champion Eagles on Monday night.

How far can the Bucs go in the playoffs?

This is a team — and a coach — that people slept on in 2023.

The oddsmakers in…

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Publish date : 2024-01-18 15:04:18

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